LETTER XVI.

WAIMANU VALLEY. HAWAII.

I AM sitting at the door of a grass lodge, at the end of
all things, for no one can pass further by land than this huge lonely cleft.
About thirty natives are sitting about me, all staring, laughing, and
chattering, and I am the only white person in the region. We have all had a
meal, sitting round a large calabash of poi and a fowl, which was killed in my honour, and roasted in
one of their stone ovens. I have forgotten my knife, and have had to help
myself after the primitive fashion of aborigines, not without some fear, for
some of them I am sure are in an advanced stage of leprosy. The brown
tattooed limbs of one man are stretched across the mat, the others are
sitting cross-legged, making lauhala leis.
One man is making fishing-lines of a beautifully white and marvellously
tenacious fibre, obtained from an Hawaiian “flax” plant (possibly Urtica argentea), very different from the New
Zealand Phornium tenax. Nearly all the
people of the valley are outside, having come to see the wahine haole: only one white woman, and she a
resident of Hawaii, having been seen in Waimanu before. I am really alone,
miles of mountain and gulch he between me and the nearest whites. This is a
wonderful place: a ravine about three miles long and
page: 230 three-quarters of a mile wide, without an obvious
means of ingress, being walled in by precipices from 2000 to 4000 feet high.
Five cascades dive from the palis at its
head, and unite to form a placid river about up to a horse's body here, and
deep enough for a horse to swim in a little below. Dense forests of various
shades of green fill up the greater part of the valley, concealing the
basins into which the cascades leap, and the grey basalt of the palis is mostly hidden by greenery. At the open
end, two bald bluffs, one of them 2000 feet in height, confront the Pacific,
and its loud booming surf comes up to within one hundred yards of the house
where I am writing, but is banked off by a heaped-up barrier of colossal
shingle.

Hot and silent, a sunset world of an endless afternoon, it seems a palpable
and living dream. And a few of these people, I understand, have dreamed away
their lives here, never having been beyond their valley, at least by land.
But it is a dream of ceaseless speech and rippling laughter. They are the
merriest people I have yet seen, and doubtless their isolated life is dear
to them.

I wish I could sketch this most picturesque scene. In the verandah, which is
formed of mats, two handsome youths, and five women in green, red, and
orange chemises, all with leis of ferns
round their hair, are reclining on the ground. Outside of this there is a
pavement of large lava stones, and groups in all colours, wreathed and
garlanded, including some much disfigured old people, crouching in red and
yellow blankets, are sitting and lying there. Some are fondling small dogs;
and a number of
page: 231 large ones, with a whole
tribe of amicable cats, are picking bones. Surf-boards, paddles, saddles,
lassos, spurs, gear, and bundles of ti
leaves are lying about. Thirteen horses are tethered outside, some of which
brought the riders who escorted me triumphantly from the head of the valley.
The foreheads of the precipices opposite are reddening in the sunset, and
between them and me horses and children are constantly swimming across the
broad, still stream which divides the village into two parts; and now and
then a man in a malo, and children who
have come up the river swimming, with their clothes in one hand, increase
the assemblage.

All are intently watching me, but are as kind and good-natured as possible;
and my guide from Waipio is discoursing to them about me. He knows a little
abrupt, disjointed, almost unintelligible English, and comes up every now
and then with an interrogation in his manner, “Father? mother? married?
watch? How came?” “You” appears beyond his efforts. “Kilauea?Lunalilo?” Then he goes back and orates
rapidly, gesticulating emphatically. A very handsome, pleasant-looking man,
with a red sash round his waist, who, I understand from signs, is the
schoolmaster, emerged from the throng, and sat down beside me; but his
English appears limited to these words, “How old?” When I told him by
counting on my fingers he laughed heartily, and said “Too old,” and he told
the others, and they all laughed. I have photographs of Queen Victoria and
Mr. Coan in my writing-book, and when I exhibited them they crowded round me
clapping their hands, and screaming with
page: 232
delight when they recognized Mr. Coan. The king's handwriting was then
handed round amidst reverent “ahs” and “ohs,” or what sounded like them.
This letter was also passed round and examined lengthwise, sidewise, and
upside down. They shrieked with satirical laughter when I pressed some
fragile ferns in my blotting-book. The natives think it quite idiotic in us
to attach any value to withered leaves. My inkstand with its double-spring
lids has been a great amusement. Each one opened both, and shut them again,
and a chorus of “maikai, maikai,” (good)
ran round the circle. They seem so simple and good that at last I have
trusted them with my watch, which excites unbounded admiration, probably
because of its small size. It is now on its travels; but I am not the least
anxious about it. A man pointed to a hut some distance on the other side of
the river, and appeared interrogative, and on my replying affirmatively, he
mounted a horse and carried off the watch in the direction indicated. Mr.
Ellis came to this valley in a canoe, and he mentions that when he preached,
the natives, who seemed to be very indifferent to the general truths of
Christianity, became very deeply interested when they heard of Ora loa ia Jesu (endless life by Jesus). While
I was up the valley the poor people made a wonderful bed of seven fine mats,
one over the other, on one side of the house, and screened it off with a
flaring muslin curtain; but on the other side there are ten pillows in a
row, so that I wonder how many are to occupy the den during the night. I am
now writing inside the house, with a hollowed stone, with some beef fat and
a wick in it, for a light, and two youths seem
page: 233 delegated to attend upon me. One holds my ink,
and if I look up, the other rushes for something that I am supposed to want.
They insist on thinking that I am cold because my clothes are wet, and have
thrown over me several folds of tapa, made
from the inner bark of the wauti or cloth
plant (Broussonetia papyrifera). They
brought me a kalo leaf containing a number
of living freshwater shrimps, and were quite surprised when I did not eat
them.

WAIPIO, March 5th.

It seems fully a week since I left Waimea yesterday morning, so many new
experiences have been crowded into the time. I will try to sketch my
expedition while my old friend Halemanu is preparing dinner. The morning
opened gloriously. The broad Waimea plains were flooded with red and gold,
and the snowy crest of Mauna Kea was cloudless. We breakfasted by lamp light
(the days of course are short in this latitude), and were away before six.
My host kindly provided me with a very fine horse and some provisions in a
leather wallet, and with another white man and a native accompanied me as
far as this valley, where they had some business. The morning deepened into
gorgeousness. A blue mist hung in heavy folds round the violet bases of the
mountains, which rose white and sharp into the rose-flushed sky; the dew lay
blue and sparkling on the short crisp grass; the air was absolutely pure,
and with a suspicion of frost in it. It was all very fair, and the horses
enjoyed the morning freshness, and danced and champed their bits
page: 234 as though they disliked being reined in. We rode
over level grass-covered ground, till we reached the Hamakua bush, fringed
with dead trees, and full of ohias and
immense fern trees, some of them with a double tier of fronds, far larger
and finer than any that I saw in New Zealand. There are herds of wild goats,
cattle, and pigs on the island, and they roam throughout this region,
trampling, grubbing, and rending, grinding the bark of the old trees and
eating up the young ones. This ravaging is threatening at no distant date to
destroy the beauty and alter the climate of the mountainous region of
Hawaii. The cattle are a hideous breed—all bones, hide, and horns.

We were at the top of the Waipio pali at
eight, and our barefooted horses, used to the soft pastures of Waimea,
refused to carry us down its rocky steep, so we had to walk. I admired this
lonely valley far more than before. It was full of infinite depths of
blue—blue smoke in lazy spirals curled upwards; it was eloquent in a morning
silence that I felt reluctant to break. Against its dewy greenness the beach
shone like coarse gold, and its slow silver river lingered lovingly, as
though loth to leave it, and be merged in the reckless loud-tongued Pacific.
Across the valley, the track I was to take climbed up in thready zigzags,
and disappeared round a bold headland. It was worth a second visit just to
get a glimpse of such a vision of peace.

Halemanu, with hospitable alacrity, soon made breakfast ready, after which
Mr. S., having arranged for my further journey, left me here, and for the
first time I
page: 235 found myself alone among
natives ignorant of English. For the Waimanu trip it is essential to have a
horse bred in the Waimanu Valley and used to its dizzy palis, and such a horse was procured, and a
handsome native, called Hananui, as guide. We were away by ten, and galloped
across the valley till we came to the nearly perpendicular pali on the other side. The sight of this
air-hung trail from Halemanu's house has turned back several travellers who
were bent on the trip, but I had been told that it was quite safe on a
Waimanu horse; and keeping under my fears as best I could, I let Hananui
precede me, and began the ascent, which is visible from here for an hour.
The pali is as nearly perpendicular as can
be. Not a bush or fern, hardly a tuft of any green thing, clothes its bare,
scathed sides. It terminates precipitously on the sea at a height of 2000
feet. Up this shelving wall, something like a sheep track, from thirty to
forty-six inches broad, goes in great swinging zigzags, sometimes as broken
steps of rock breast high, at others as a smooth ledge with hardly foothold,
in three places canied away by heavy rains—altogether the most frightful
track that imagination can conceive.*
It was most unpleasant to see the guide's horse straining and scrambling,
looking every now and then as if about to fall over backwards. My horse went
up wisely and nobly, but slipping, jumping, scrambling, and sending stones
over the ledge, now and then hanging for a second by his fore feet. The
higher

* The
Inspector of Schools has since told me that there is a track as bad, if
not worse, in the Hana district on Maui.

page: 236 we went the narrower and worse it grew. The girth
was loose, so as not to impede the horse's respiration, the broad cinch
which usually passes under the body having been fastened round his chest,
and yet it was once or twice necessary to run the risk of losing my balance
by taking my left foot out of the stirrup to press it against the horse's
neck to prevent it from being crushed, while my right hung over the
precipice. He came to a place where the path had been carried away, leaving
a declivity of loose sand and gravel. You can hardly realize how difficult
it was to dismount, when there was no margin outside the horse. I somehow
slid under him, being careful not to turn the saddle, and getting hold of
his hind leg, screwed myself round carefully behind him. It was alarming to
see these sure-footed creatures struggle and slide in the deep gravel as
though they must go over, and not less so to find myself sliding, though I
was grasping my horse's tail.

Between the summit and Waimanu, a distance of ten miles, there are nine
gulches, two of them about 900 feet deep, all very beautiful, owing to the
broken ground, the luxuriant vegetation, and the bright streams, but the
kona, or south wind, was blowing,
bringing up the hot breath of the equatorial belt, and the sun was perfectly
unclouded, so that the heat of the gorges was intense. They succeed each
other occasionally with very great rapidity. Between two of the deepest and
steepest there is a ridge not more than fifty yards wide.

Soon after noon we simultaneously stopped our horses. The Waimanu Valley lay
2500 feet (it is said) below us,
page: 237 and the
trail struck off into space. It was a scene of loneliness to which Waipio
seems the world. In a second the eye took in the twenty grass lodges of its
inhabitants, the five cascades which dive into the dense forests of its
upper end, its river like a silver ribbon, and its meadows of living green.
In ten seconds a bird could have spanned the ravine and feasted on its
loveliness, but we could only tip over the dizzy ridge that overhangs the
valley, and laboriously descend into its heat and silence. The track is as
steep and broken as that which goes up from hence, but not nearly so narrow,
and without its elements of terror, for kukuis, lauhalas, ohias, and ti
trees, with a lavish growth of ferns and trailers, grow luxuriantly in every
damp rift of rock, and screen from view the precipices of the pali. The valley looks as if it could only be
reached in a long day's travel, so very far it is below, but the steepness
of the track makes it accessible in an hour from the summit. As we
descended, houses and a church which had looked like toys at first, dilated
on our sight, the silver ribbon became a stream, the specks on the meadows
turned into horses, the white wavy line on the Pacific beach turned into a
curling wave, and lower still, I saw people, who had seen us coming down,
hastily shuffling into clothes.

There were four houses huddled between the pali and the river, and six or eight, with a church and
schoolhouse on the other side; and between these and the ocean a steep
narrow beach, composed of large stones worn as round and smooth as cannon
balls, on which
page: 238 the surf roars the whole
year round. The pali which walls in the
valley on the other side is inaccessible. The school children and a great
part of the population had assembled in front of the house which I described
before. There was a sort of dyke of rough lava stones round it, difficult to
climb, but the natives, though they are very kind, did not, on this or any
similar occasion, offer me any help, which neglect, I suppose, arises from
the fact that the native women never need help, as they are as strong,
fearless, and active as the men, and rival them in swimming and other
athletic sports. An old man, clothed only with his dark skin, was pounding
baked kalo for poi, in front of the house; a woman with flowers in her hair,
but apparently not otherwise clothed, was wading up to her waist in the
river, pushing before her a light trumpet-shaped basket used for catching
shrimps, and the other women wore the usual bright-coloured chemises.

I wanted to make the most of the six hours of daylight left, and we remounted
our horses and rode for some distance up the river, which is the highway of
the valley, all the children swimming on our right and left, each holding up
a bundle of clothes with one hand, and two canoes paddled behind us. The
river is still and clear, with a smooth bottom, but comes halfway up a
horse's body, and riders take their feet out of the stirrups, bring them to
a level with the saddle, lean slightly back, and hold them against the
horse's neck. Equestrians following this fashion, canoes gliding, children
and dogs swimming, were a most amusing picture. Several of the children
page: 239 swim to and from school every day. I was
anxious to get rid of this voluntary escort, and we took a gallop over the
soft springy grass till we reached some very pretty grass houses, under the
shade of the most magnificent bread-fruit trees on Hawaii, loaded with
fruit. There were orange trees in blossom, and coffee trees with masses of
sweet white flowers lying among their flaky branches like snow, and the
unfailing cocoa-nut rising out of banana groves, and clusters of gardenia
smothering the red hibiscus. Here Hananui adopted a showman's air; he made
me feel as if I were one of Barnum's placarded monsters. I had nothing to do
but sit on my horse and be stared at. I felt that my bleached face was
unpleasing, that my eyes and hair were faded, and that I had a great deal to
answer for in the way of colour and attire. From the way in which he asked
me unintelligible questions, I gathered that the people were catechizing him
about me, and that he was romancing largely at my expense. They brought me
some bananas and cocoa-nut milk, which were most refreshing.

Beyond the houses the valley became a jungle of Indian shot (Canna indica), eight or nine feet high, guavas
and ohias, with an entangled undergrowth
of ferns rather difficult to penetrate, and soon Hananui, whose soul was
hankering after the delights of society, stopped, saying, “Lios (horses) no go.” “We'll try,” I replied,
and rode on first. He sat on his horse laughing immoderately, and then
followed me. I see that in travelling with natives it is essential to have a
definite plan of action in one's own mind, and to verge on self-assertion in
carrying it
page: 240 out. We fought out way a
little further, and then he went out of sight altogether in the jungle, his
horse having floundered up to his girth in soft ground, on which we
dismounted and tethered the horses. H. had never been any further, and as I
failed to make him understand that I desired to visit the home of the five
cascades, I had to reverse our positions and act as guide. We crept along
the side of a torrent among exquisite trees, moss, and ferns, till we came
to a place where it divided. There were three horses tethered there, some
wearing apparel lying on the rocks, and some human footprints along one of
the streams, which decided me in favour of the other. H. remonstrated by
signs, as doubtless he espied an opportunity for much gossip in the other
direction, but on my appearing persistent, he again laughed and followed
me.

From this point it was one perfect, rapturous, intoxicating, supreme vision
of beauty, and I felt, as I now believe, that at last I had reached a scene
on which foreign eves had never looked. The glories of the tropical forest
closed us in with their depth, colour, and redundancy. Here the operations
of nature are rapid and decisive. A rainfall of eleven feet in a year and a
hothouse temperature force every plant into ceaseless activity, and make
short work of decay. Leafage, blossom, fruitage, are simultaneous and
perennial. The river, about as broad as the Cam at Cambridge, leaped along,
clear like amber, pausing to rest awhile in deep bright pools, where fish
were sporting above the golden sand, a laughing, sparkling, rushing,
terrorless stream, “without mysteries
page: 241 or
agonies,” broken by rocks, green with mosses and fragile ferns, and in whose
unchilled waters, not more than three feet deep, wading was both safe and
pleasant. It was not possible to creep along its margin, the forest was so
dense and tangled, so we waded the whole way, and wherever the water ran
fiercely my unshod guide helped me. One varied, glorious maze of vegetation
came down to it, and every green thing leant lovingly towards it, or stooped
to touch it, and over its whole magic length was arched and interlaced the
magnificent large-leaved ohia, whose
millions of spikes of rose-crimson blossoms lit up the whole arcade, and the
light of the afternoon sun slanted and trickled through them, dancing in the
mirthful water, turning its far-down sands to gold, and brightening the
many-shaded greens of candlenut and breadfruit. It shone on majestic
fern-trees, on the fragile Polypodium
tamariscinum, which clung tremblingly to the branches of the
ohia, on the beautiful lygodium, which
adorned the uncouth trunk of the breadfruit; on shining banana leaves and
glossy trailing yams; on gigantic lianas, which, climbing to the tops of the
largest trees, descended in vast festoons, passing from tree to tree, and
interlacing the forest with a living network; and on lycopodiums of every
kind, from those which wrapped the rocks in feathery green to others hardly
distinguishable from ferns. But there were twilight depths too, where no
sunlight penetrated the leafy gloom, damp and cool: dreamy shades, in which
the music of the water was all too sweet, and the loveliness too entrancing,
creating that sadness, hardly “akin to pain,” which is latent in
page: 242 all intense enjoyment. Here and there a tree had
fallen across the river, from which grew upwards and trailed downwards,
fairy-like, semi-transparent mosses and ferns, all glittering with moisture
and sunshine, and now and then a scarlet tropic bird heightened the effect
by the flash of his plumage.

After an hour of wading we emerged into broad sunny daylight at the home of
the five cascades, which fall from a semicircular precipice into three
basins. It is not, however, possible to pass from one to the other. This
great gulf is a grand sight, with its dark deep basin from which it seemed
so far to look up to the heavenly blue, and the water falling calmly and
unhurriedly, amidst innumerable rainbows, from a height of 3000 feet. The
sides were draped with ferns flourishing under the spray, and at the base
the rock was very deeply caverned. I enjoyed a delicious bath, relying on
sun and wind to dry my clothes, and then reluctantly waded down the river.
At its confluence with another stream, still arched by ohias, a man and two women appeared rising out
of the water, like a vision of the elder world in the days of Fauns, and
Naiads, and Hamadryads. The water was up to their waists, and leis of ohia
blossoms and ferns, and masses of unbound hair fantastically wreathed with
moss, fell over their faultless forms, and their rich brown skin gleamed in
the slant sunshine. They were catching shrimps with trumpet-shaped baskets,
perhaps rather a prosaic occupation. They joined us, and we waded down
together to the place where they had left their horses. The women slipped
into their holukus, and the
page: 243 man insisted on my riding his barebacked horse to
the place where we had left our own, and then we all galloped over the soft
grass.

Waimanu had turned out to meet us about thirty people on horseback, all of
whom shook hands with me, and some of them threw over me garlands of
ohia, pandanus, and hibiscus. Where
our cavalcade entered the river, a number of children and dogs and three
canoes awaited us, and thus escorted I returned triumphantly to the house.
The procession on the river of paddling canoes, swimming children, and dogs,
and more than thirty riders, with their feet tucked up round their horses'
necks, all escorting a “pale face,” was grotesque and enchanting, and I
revelled in this lapse into savagery, and enjoyed heartily the kindliness
and goodwill of this unsophisticated people.

When darkness spread over the valley, clear voices ascended in a weird
recitative, the room filled up with people, pipes circulated freely,
poi was again produced, and calabashes
of cocoa-nut milk. The mêlés were long,
and I crept within my curtain and lay down, but the drowsiness which
legitimately came over me after riding thirty miles and wading two, was
broken in upon by two monstrous cockroaches really as large as mice, with
fierce-looking antennæ and prominent eyes, both of which mounted guard on my
pillow. On rising to drive them away, I found to my dismay that they were
but the leaders of a host, which only made a temporary retreat, rustling
over the mat and dried grass with the crisp tread of mice, and scaring away
sleep for some hours. Worse than
page: 244 these
were the mosquitoes, also an imported nuisance, which stabbed and stung
without any preliminary droning; and the heat was worse still, for thirteen
human beings were lying on the floor and the door was shut. Had I known that
two of these were lepers, I should have felt far from comfortable. As it
was, I got up soon after midnight, and cautiously stepping among the
sleeping forms, went out of doors. Everything favoured reflection, but I
think the topics to which my mind most frequently reverted were my own
absolute security—a lone white woman among “savages,” and the civilizing
influence which Christianity has exercised, so that even in this isolated
valley, gouged out of a mountainous coast, there was nothing disagreeable or
improper to be seen. The night was very still, but the sea was moaning; the
river rippled very gently as it brushed past the reeds; there was a hardly
perceptible vibration in the atmosphere, which suggested falling water and
quivering leaves; and the air was full of a heavy, drowsy fragrance, the
breath of orange flowers, perhaps, and of the night-blowing Cereus, which
had opened its ivory urn to the moon. I should have liked to stay out all
night in the vague, delicious moonlight, but the dew was heavy, and moreover
I had not any boots on, so I reluctantly returned to the grass house, which
was stifling with heat and smells of cocoa-nut oil, tobacco, and the rancid
smoke from beef fat.

Before sunrise this morning my horse was saddled, and a number of natives had
assembled. Hananui had disappeared, but the man who lent me his bare-backed
horse
page: 245 yesterday was ready to act as
guide. My boots could not then be found, so I adopted the native fashion of
riding with bare feet. We again rode up the river in that slow and solemn
fashion in which horses walk in water, galloped over a stretch of grass,
crossed a bright stream several times, and then entered a dense jungle of
Indian shot, plantains, and sadlerias, with breadfruit, kukui, and ohia rising out of it. There were thousands of plantains, a
fruit resembling the banana, but that it requires cooking. The Indian shot,
the yellow-blossomed variety, was of a gigantic size. Its hard, black seeds
put into a bladder furnish the chic-chac,
which in many places is used as an accompaniment to the utterly abominable
and heathenish tom-tom. Here guavas as large as oranges and as yellow as
lemons ripened and fell unheeded. Sometimes deep down we heard the rush of
water, and Paalau got down and groped for it on his hands and knees;
sometimes we heard a noise as of hippopotami, but nothing could be seen but
the tips of ears, as a herd of happy, unbroken horses, scared by our
approach, crashed away through the jungle. Clear rapid streams,
fern-fringed, sometimes offered us a few yards of highway, but the jungle
ever grew more dense, the forest trees larger, the lianas more tangled, the
streams more sunk and rocky, and though the horses shut their eyes and
boldly pushed through the tangle, we were fairly foiled when within half a
mile from the head of the valley. I thoroughly appreciated the unsightly
leather guards which are here used to cover the stirrups and feet, as
without them I could not have ridden ten yards. We were so
page: 246 hemmed in that it was difficult to dismount, but
I bound some wild kalo leaves round my
feet, and managed to get over some broken rock to a knoll, from which I
obtained a superb view of the wonderful cleft. Palis 3000 feet in height walled in its head with a complete
inaccessibility. It lay in cool dewy shadow till the sudden sun flushed its
precipices with pink, and a broad bar of light revealed the great chasm in
which it terminates, while far off its portals opened upon the red eastern
sky. This little lonely world had become so very dear to me, that I found it
hard to leave it.

There was some stir near the sea, for a man was about to build a grass house,
and they were preparing a stone pavement for it. Thirty people sat on the
ground in a line from the beach, and passed stones from hand to hand, as men
pass buckets at a fire. It seemed a very attractive occupation, and I could
hardly get Hananui to leave it. The natives are most gregarious and social
in their habits. They assemble together for everything that has to be made
or done, and their occupations and amusements are shared by both sexes. In
old days it is said that a king of Hawaii assembled most of the adults of
the then populous island, and formed a human chain three miles long to pass
up stones for the building of the great Heiau in Kona. It is said that this valley had 2000
inhabitants forty years ago, but they have dwindled to 117. The former
estimate is probably not an excessive one, for nearly the whole valley is
suitable for the culture of kalo, and a
square mile of kalo will feed 15,000
natives for a year.

page: 247

Two women were shrimping in the river, the children were swimming to school,
blue smoke curled up into the still air, kalo was baking among the stones, and a group of women sat
sewing and making leis on the ground. The
Waimanui day had begun; and it was odd to think that though the long summer
years days dawned like this, and that the people of the valley grew grey and
old in shrimping and sewing and kalo
baking. All Waimanu shook hands with me, the kindly “Aloha” filled the air, and the women threw garlands over us
both. I could hardly induce my host to accept a dollar and a half for my
entertainment. From the dizzy summit of the pali, where the sun was high and hot, I looked my last on the
dark, cool valley, slumbering in an endless calm, the deepest, greenest,
quaintest cleft on all the island.

The sun was fierce and bright, the ocean had a metallic glint, the hot breath
of the kona was scorching. My hands,
swollen from mosquito bites, could not be stuffed into my gloves, and
inflamed under the sun, and my wet boots baked and stiffened on my feet.
Hananui plaited a crown of leaves for my hot head, which I found a great
relief. I was still minded to linger, for one side of each glorious gulch
was cool with shadow and dripping with dew. The blue morning glories were
yet unwilted, rivulets dropped down into ferny grottoes and lingered there,
rose ohia blossoms lighted shady places,
orange flowers; gleamed like stars amidst the dense leafage, and the
crimped-leaved coffee shrubs were white with their mimic snow. It was my
last tropical dream, and I was rudely roused by finding myself on the
unsightly verge of the
page: 248 great bluff on the
north side of this valley, which plunges to the sea with an uncompromising
perpendicular dip of 2000 feet, and carries on its dizzy brow a shelving
trail not more than two feet wide!

I felt that I must go back and live and die in Waimanu rather than descend
that scathed steep, and being stupid with terror flung myself from my horse,
forgetting that it was much safer to trust to his four feet than to my two,
and to an animal without “nerves,” dizziness, or “the fore-knowledge of
death,” than to my palsied, cowardly self. I had intended to go into details
of the horrible descent, but the “pilikia”
is over now, and Halemanu claps me on the shoulder with an approving smile,
ejaculating, “Maikai, maikai” (good).
Besides, my returning senses inform me that I have not tasted food since
yesterday, and some delicious river fishes are smoking on the
table......